Democrats Try to Delay Eavesdropping Vote

WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats concede that they probably lack the votes needed to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone utilities that helped the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping, and they are seeking to put off the vote for another month.

The Senate delayed a vote in December, and it is scheduled to take up the issue again in a debate beginning Thursday.

Putting off the vote for a second time riled White House officials and Republicans on Tuesday, because they insist that national security will be put at risk if Congress does not meet a Feb. 1 deadline to amend the eavesdropping law.

“We’ve had six months to get this done,” a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said in an interview. “We shouldn’t need more time to get this done.”

The debate has percolated since the disclosure in December 2005 that President Bush had authorized the security agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorist ties.

Since then, Congress has struggled with how it should respond to the president’s actions. A temporary solution developed last August, when Congress, in a rushed vote just before its summer recess, agreed to give Mr. Bush many of the broadened eavesdropping powers he had sought.

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Patrick J. Leahys plan leaves out protection for telecommunications companies.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

Democrats came under fire from their supporters for submitting to White House pressure. The August measure expanded the powers of the security agency for six months, with the broadened authority expiring on Feb. 1. It left out one element long sought by the White House, legal protection for telephone carriers against civil suits or criminal prosecution growing out of the eavesdropping.

The White House has continued its efforts to make the broadened eavesdropping permanent and for immunity for the utilities. Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to give a speech on the topic on Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation here.

The House approved a bill in November that omitted the immunity, as lawmakers opposed to the concept insisted that the companies should not be rewarded with legal protection for taking part in what some legal experts say was an illegal operation.

AT&T and other utilities face multibillion-dollar suits over their reported roles in the program.

The immunity issue has splintered Senate Democrats. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee, has received approval from his committee for a plan that includes immunity.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has won passage of a competing plan that leaves it out.

“In the end, I think something like the Intelligence Committee bill would pass — with the immunity,” said a senior Democratic official who opposes the immunity plan and insisted on anonymity. “I don’t know that it’s possible to get anything through the Senate that doesn’t grant the telecom companies immunity.”

Advocates for civil liberties fault the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, for what they see as a weak effort to block the White House immunity plan. Mr. Reid opposes immunity, but his decision to allow an initial vote on the Intelligence Committee plan, with immunity, has angered opponents.

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John D. Rockefeller IVs plan includes utilities immunity.Credit
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

“If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,” Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.”

A spokesman for Mr. Reid, Jim Manley called such criticism ridiculous.

“Senator Reid intends to do everything he can to strip immunity from the bill,” Mr. Manley said.

Even if the Senate does approve a bill that includes immunity, it seems unlikely that such a plan could be signed into law before the Feb. 1 deadline, Congressional officials said.

Because the House has passed a measure that did not include immunity, the issue would first have to go before a conference committee to work out an agreement between the two versions. That could take weeks.

Because of the time problem, Mr. Reid proposed again on Tuesday that the temporary August legislation be extended a month “to allow lawmakers additional time to get this right.”

Republican leaders and the White House oppose that.

Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday, “To stall legislation needed to help our intelligence community prevent attacks and protect American lives is not only irresponsible, it’s also dangerous.”

Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, said in an interview that if the August bill was allowed to expire in 10 days, intelligence officials would still be able to continue eavesdropping on already approved targets for another year under the law.

But “there is a risk,” Mr. Wainstein said, that the officials would not be able to use their broadened authority to identify and focus on new suspects and would have to revert to the more restrictive, pre-August standards if they wanted to eavesdrop on someone.

Correction: January 30, 2008

An article on Jan. 23 about Senate debate on a plan to provide immunity for telephone companies that helped the National Security Agency with a wiretapping program misspelled the surname of the director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union who criticized Senator Harry Reid’s strategy for handling the measure. She is Caroline Fredrickson, not Frederickson.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Try to Delay Eavesdropping Vote. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe